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Andi Zeisler (born c. 1972) is an American writer and co-founder of Bitch Media , a nonprofit feminist media organization based in Portland, Oregon, United States.
Zeisler was born in New York. [1] In 1994, Zeisler graduated from the Colorado College with a BA in fine art. [2] After graduation, she moved with high school friend Lisa Jervis to Oakland and began making plans for their own zine when Sassy magazine was purchased by another publisher. Sassy's change in focus led the pair to believe there was a niche they could fill. [1]
In 1996, Zeisler and Jervis co-founded Bitch magazine as an all-volunteer zine with a circulation of three hundred copies. In 1998, the pair began to grow the magazine into a quarterly publication with help from the Independent Press Association. It was later an internationally distributed with a circulation of more than fifty thousand. Bitch Media's mission was to provide and encourage an engaged feminist response to pop culture. In 2007, the magazine was moved to Portland and in 2009 rebranded as Bitch Media. [1] [3] [4] [5] It later ceased publication in 2022. [6]
Zeisler's writing, which focuses mainly on feminist interpretations of popular culture, has been featured in a variety of publications including Mother Jones , [7] the San Francisco Chronicle , [8] and Ms. [2]
Zeisler's 2016 book, We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement, examines marketplace feminism (the appropriation of feminist messaging as a marketing strategy), and relationships between pop culture and feminist challenges to power through activism. [9] [10] [11]
A zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation. A fanzine is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest. The term was coined in an October 1940 science fiction fanzine by Russ Chauvenet and popularized within science fiction fandom, entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1949.
Queercore is a cultural/social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of the punk subculture and a music genre that comes from punk rock. It is distinguished by its discontent with society in general, and specifically society's disapproval of the LGBT community. Queercore expresses itself in a DIY style through magazines, music, writing and film.
Kathleen Hanna is an American singer, musician and pioneer of the feminist punk riot grrrl movement, and punk zine writer. In the early-to-mid-1990s, she was the lead singer of feminist punk band Bikini Kill, and then fronted the electronic rock band Le Tigre in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since 2010, she has recorded as the Julie Ruin.
Tobi Celeste Vail is an American independent musician, music critic and feminist activist from Olympia, Washington. She was a central figure in the riot grrl scene—she coined the spelling of "grrl"—and she started the zine Jigsaw. A drummer, guitarist and singer, she was a founding member of the band Bikini Kill. Vail has collaborated in several other bands figuring in the Olympia music scene. Vail writes for eMusic.
A punk zine is a zine related to the punk subculture and hardcore punk music genre. Often primitively or casually produced, they feature punk literature, such as social commentary, punk poetry, news, gossip, music reviews and articles about punk rock bands or regional punk scenes.
Third-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X third-wave feminists born in the 1960s and 1970s embraced diversity and individualism in women, and sought to redefine what it meant to be a feminist. The third wave saw the emergence of new feminist currents and theories, such as intersectionality, sex positivity, vegetarian ecofeminism, transfeminism, and postmodern feminism. According to feminist scholar Elizabeth Evans, the "confusion surrounding what constitutes third-wave feminism is in some respects its defining feature."
Girl power is a slogan that encourages and celebrates women's empowerment, independence, confidence and strength. The slogan's invention is credited to the US punk band Bikini Kill, who published a zine called Bikini Kill #2: Girl Power in 1991. It was then popularized in the mainstream by the British girl group Spice Girls in the mid-1990s. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the Spice Girls' usage of "girl power" was one of the defining cultural touchstones that shaped the Millennial generation, particularly during their childhood in the 1990s. However, since the maturing of older Millennials in the late 2000s, it has increasingly been dropped in favor of challenging real-world sexism that has become mainstream as of Generation Z's maturing of the 2020s.
Bitch was an independent, quarterly alternative magazine published in Portland, Oregon. Its tagline described it as a "feminist response to pop culture", and it was described in 2008 by Columbia Journalism Review as "a respected journal of cultural discourse". As a feminist publication, it took an intersectional approach.
Girl Germs was a zine created by University of Oregon students Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman, both members of the band Bratmobile.
Lisa Jervis is an American writer, editor, publisher, and information technology professional. She is one of the founding editors and publisher of Bitch Magazine, established in 1996.
Feminism has affected culture in many ways, and has famously been theorized in relation to culture by Angela McRobbie, Laura Mulvey and others. Timothy Laurie and Jessica Kean have argued that "one of [feminism's] most important innovations has been to seriously examine the ways women receive popular culture, given that so much pop culture is made by and for men." This is reflected in a variety of forms, including literature, music, film and other screen cultures.
Skinned Teen was a riot grrrl band from London, England, active in the early 1990s. They have been cited as an inspiration by Beth Ditto, Kathleen Hanna, Gina Birch and Josephine Olausson of Love Is All.
Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington, and the greater Pacific Northwest, and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. A subcultural movement that combines feminism, punk music, and politics, it is often associated with third-wave feminism, which is sometimes seen as having grown out of the riot grrrl movement and has recently been seen in fourth-wave feminist punk music that rose in the 2010s. The genre has also been described as coming out of indie rock, with the punk scene serving as an inspiration for a movement in which women could express anger, rage, and frustration, emotions considered socially acceptable for male songwriters but less commonly for women.
Go! Push Pops, formally named The Push Pop Collective is a queer, transnational, radical feminist art collective under the direction of Elisa Garcia de la Huerta and Katie Cercone.
Mimi Thi Nguyen is a Vietnamese-born American scholar, punk and zine author.
Women have made significant contributions to punk rock music and its subculture since its inception in the 1970s. In contrast to the rock music and heavy metal scenes of the 1970s, which were dominated by men, the anarchic, counter-cultural mindset of the punk scene in mid-and-late 1970s encouraged women to participate. This participation played a role in the historical development of punk music, especially in the US and UK at that time, and continues to influence and enable future generations. Women have participated in the punk scene as lead singers, instrumentalists, as all-female bands, zine contributors and fashion designers.
Evelyn McDonnell is an American writer and academic. Writing primarily about popular culture, music, and society, she "helped to forge a new kind of feminism for her generation." She is associate professor of journalism and new media at Loyola Marymount University.
Sara Marcus is a writer and musician best known for her 2010 book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. She began her writing career as a participant in the riot grrrl movement, writing zines as a teenager in Washington, DC. She subsequently worked as a journalist, writing about music and politics. In 2018, she earned a PhD in English at Princeton University and is an assistant professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.
Megan Beth Koester is an American comedian, writer, journalist and actress who regularly performs stand-up comedy in Los Angeles, CA. From 2013 to 2018, she was a contributor to Vice Magazine, writing about media, comedy, the entertainment industry, feminism and Los Angeles culture. She writes on similar subjects for Jezebel, Thrillist and The Guardian.
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